Hadji Murad and other stories (riverrun editions)

'How truth thickens and deepens when it migrates from didactic fable to the raw experience of a visceral awakening is one of the thrills of Tolstoy's stories'Sharon Cameron in her preface to Hadji Murad and Other StoriesThe stories in this volume exemplify Leo Tolstoy's literary style of capturing very real, very human experiences. The settings that are found here are wide-ranging and textured, but these characters all face up to the conditions of humanity that govern our happiness, the existence of morality, kindness, compassion and equality. The title story shows Tolstoy's attempt to preserve the horrors of war; its inherent destruction that cannot be undone.

A story that is written with a painstaking precision.